Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Dry Bones

Continuing along with another skeleton variant.

From Dragon #138:

A classic Walt Disney cartoon featured dancing skeletons, and animated skeletons often appear in cartoon features. Such skeletons not only dance but trade heads, fall into piles of bones, and reform into skeletons again. The skeleton variation herein called dry bones is inspired by the antics of cartoon skeletons. The name “dry bones” comes from the song of the same name (“The leg bone is connected to the hip bone,” etc.).

Dry Bones

Medium undead, neutral evil

Armor Class 13

Hit Points 32 (5d8 + 10)

Speed 30 ft.

STR

DEX

CON

INT

WIS

CHA

10 (+0)

14 (+2)

15 (+2)

6 (-2)

8 (-1)

5 (-3)

Damage Vulnerabilities bludgeoning

Damage Immunities poison

Condition Immunities exhaustion, poisoned

Senses darkvision 60 ft., passive Perception 9

Languages understands all languages it knew in life but can’t speak

Challenge 1 (200 XP)Combine. Dry bones can combine their bones together to form larger skeletons or to "heal" themselves up to full hit points.

Dry bones are the same as skeletons with one important difference. They can only be destroyed when all their bones are pulverized or otherwise completely destroyed. A dry bones taking a total of 8 or more hp damage collapses into a pile of bones. After one round, the bones re-form into a skeleton and attack again. The process continues until the dry bones has taken a total of 32 or more hp damage in combat, at which point the dry bones falls apart forever.

Dry bones often masquerade as mere piles of old bones, being able to dismember themselves at will until they are destroyed. While dry bones have no treasure themselves, they often act as treasure guards.